African American Literature Beyond Race by Gene Andrew Jarrett

Author:Gene Andrew Jarrett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2006-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Ann Petry (1908–1997)

Over the years, receptions of Ann Petry’s Country Place have been mixed. Following its publication in 1947, groups of British readers made the folksy narrative of gossip, marital infidelity, malice, sudden death, and surprise bequests a book of the month. Reviewers in American mainstream publications applauded the novel. Richard Sullivan in the New York Times Book Review lauded the novel’s “quiet […] carefully and economically phrased” narration, while Rose Feld in the New York Herald Tribune Weekly praised its “integrity of dialogue.”1 Other readers, particularly those of the African American community, totally dismissed the novel. Alain Locke, a prominent spokesman of African American literature, wrote beguilingly in the 1940s that “Country Place [had] neither the surge nor the social significance of [Petry’s] first novel.”2

Petry’s first novel, The Street (1946), an immediate bestseller, is a naturalistic narrative about an African American mother’s aborted attempts to provide a better life for herself and her son in urban America. By 1987, the book had been received largely in the African American community, and the critical sentiments had not changed. Writing in The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition, Bernard Bell insisted that “[b]ecause the major characters are white and because time and place are more important thematically than color and class [Country Place] is not as relevant … to [the] theory of a distinctive Afro-American narrative tradition [as that found in] The Street.”3

In the twenty-first century, emerging readers and critics of African American literature are revisiting Country Place and are arriving at different conclusions about its merits. In particular, these critics are encouraging contextual readings of the narrative. They are forcing readers to question what constitutes “a distinctive African American narrative.” Is it race? Themes? Or the writer’s style and design? Furthermore, how should we approach African American literature? At its face value? From its context or “underlying codes”? Or from both?

In Ann Petry (1996), Hilary Holladay’s contextual reading of Country Place reveals how Petry’s novel marks a continuity among black and white writers in America who have scrutinized characters from “small town” settings. But, as Holladay emphasizes in her comparative review, it is Petry who goes beyond her peers to attend to a more specific interest:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.